Wright State University CORE Scholar Biological Sciences Faculty Publications Biological Sciences 2-3-2014 Host Specificity And Co-Speciation In vianA Haemosporidia In The Western Cape, South Africa Sharon Okanga Graeme S. Cumming Philip A.R. Hockey Lisa Nupen Jeffrey L. Peters Wright State University - Main Campus, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/biology Part of the Biology Commons, and the Systems Biology Commons Repository Citation Okanga, S., Cumming, G. S., Hockey, P. A., Nupen, L., & Peters, J. L. (2014). Host Specificity And Co- Speciation In Avian Haemosporidia In The Western Cape, South Africa. PLoS One, 9 (2), e86382. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/biology/664 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Biological Sciences Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Host Specificity and Co-Speciation in Avian Haemosporidia in the Western Cape, South Africa Sharon Okanga1*, Graeme S. Cumming1, Philip A. R. Hockey1, Lisa Nupen1, Jeffrey L. Peters2 1 Percy FitzPatrick Institute, A Centre of Excellence for the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 2 Department of Biological Sciences, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, United States of America Abstract Host and pathogen ecology are often closely linked, with evolutionary processes often leading to the development of host specificity traits in some pathogens. Host specificity may range from ‘generalist’, where pathogens infect any available competent host; to ‘specialist’, where pathogens repeatedly infect specific host species or families. Avian malaria ecology in the region remains largely unexplored, despite the presence of vulnerable endemic avian species. We analysed the expression of host specificity in avian haemosporidia, by applying a previously developed host specificity index to lineages isolated from wetland passerines in the Western Cape, South Africa. Parasite lineages were isolated using PCR and identified when possible using matching lineages deposited in GenBank and in MalAvi. Parasitic clades were constructed from phylogenetic trees consisting of Plasmodium and Haemoproteus lineages. Isolated lineages matched some strains of Plasmodium relictum, P. elongatum, Haemoproteus sylvae and H. lanii. Plasmodium lineages infected a wide range of hosts from several avian families in a generalist pattern of infection. Plasmodium spp. also exhibited an infection trend according to host abundance rather than host species. By contrast, Haemoproteus lineages were typically restricted to one or two host species or families, and displayed higher host fidelity than Plasmodium spp. The findings confirm that a range of host specificity traits are exhibited by avian haemosporidia in the region. The traits show the potential to not only impact infection prevalence within specific host species, but also to affect patterns of infection at the community level. Citation: Okanga S, Cumming GS, Hockey PAR, Nupen L, Peters JL (2014) Host Specificity and Co-Speciation in Avian Haemosporidia in the Western Cape, South Africa. PLoS ONE 9(2): e86382. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086382 Editor: Dipshikha Chakravortty, Indian Institute of Science, India Received October 3, 2013; Accepted December 13, 2013; Published February 3, 2014 Copyright: ß 2014 Okanga et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by grants from the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology and the International Foundation for Science (www.ifs.se; grant no. D/4995-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: [email protected] Introduction community to which it belongs [1,2]. These traits, and the internal environment offered by a potential host, may be differentially Recent advances in molecular ecology have profoundly altered suited to the life history and needs of a particular parasite. In the nature of research on parasites and parasitism. For many highly selective parasites (specialists), success is closely linked to the parasitic microorganisms, such as malaria parasites, molecular availability and distribution of a single preferred host species, often ecology has provided both a newfound ability to identify parasites resulting in disease prevalence being an indirect reflection of that accurately and the tools for understanding how and when host- host’s ecology [3,4,5]. In the converse scenario, generalism, a parasite coevolution occurs. Within the broader context of host- parasite’s success is dependent upon its ability to infect as wide a parasite relationships, one of the more intriguing questions that variety of hosts as possible. Hence, the wider the choice of hosts molecular methods have opened up is that of how differences in available, the greater the chances of success for a highly generalist the degree of host specialization in closely related parasites have parasite, especially in biodiverse environments [6]. The number of arisen. For example, avian haemosporidia (some of which cause hosts a parasite infects is often a manifestation of specific life avian malaria), occupy niches that range from extreme host history traits resulting from the co-evolution of host and parasite specialization to extreme host generalization. Each clade repre- [7,8]. Generally, parasites infecting a smaller group of hosts or sents a persistent [hence, successful] solution to a complex problem closely related host species have often developed a more long-term that incorporates environmental influences as well as elements of co-evolutionary history with their hosts. The number of hosts a parasite, vector, and host ecology and physiology. Unravelling the parasite infects – also referred to as ‘host specialization’- can roles of these different elements in host-parasite coevolution has potentially be defined using the phylogenetic distances between the potential to offer profound insights not only into parasite host species per parasite [8]. ecology, but also more generally into the process of speciation in Prior research on the host specificity of avian haemosporidia has heterogeneous habitats and communities. revealed a considerable amount of elasticity amongst avian The likelihood that a potential host will come into contact with haemosporidia regarding their level of host specificity. Plasmodium a parasite is influenced by its ecological traits, including such and Haemoproteus spp. can display alternating specialist and variables as its life history, movement patterns, territoriality, diet, generalist traits, with some parasites infecting a wide range of social behaviours, and overall abundance as well as the broader avian hosts and showing greater potential to invade novel hosts PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 February 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 2 | e86382 Host Specificity in Avian Haemosporidia [9]. Some studies have concluded that particular avian haemo- Molecular analysis sporidia show little evidence for host specificity [10,11], whereas Blood samples were analysed using PCR, as detailed by other studies show parasites exhibiting greater selectivity [4,12,13]. Cumming et al. [13]. DNA was extracted from whole blood using Similarly, some haemosporidia can infect multiple species, but the DNeasy tissue kit (Qiagen). A nested PCR was conducted to predominantly infect only a select few hosts – a trait that cannot be amplify and sequence 478 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome b said to be purely specialist but shows preferential tendencies gene following an adapted protocol of Waldenstro¨m et al. [25]. [14,15]. Partial specialization, which has also been demonstrated The protocol used 8 mL of water, 12.5 mL of GoTaq Green for African ticks [16], is often seen when there is more than one Master Mix (Promega, Madison, WI, USA), 1.5 mL of primer preferred host and/or when hosts are abundantly available [17]. HaemNF (10 nM concentration – [25]), 1.5 mL of primer Results from previous studies [13,18] provide some indication of HaemNR2 (10 nM concentration), and 2 mL of sample in a the richness and host specificity of avian haemosporidian lineages 25 mL reaction. The PCR profile was conducted as follows: 94uC occurring in Africa but shed little light on evolutionary mecha- for 3 minutes, 35 cycles of 94uC for 30 seconds, 50uC annealing nisms. As a step towards enhancing knowledge on host-parasite for 30 seconds, and 72uC extension for 45 seconds, and finally a interactions in avian haemosporidia and potential evolutionary 72uC step for 10 minutes. A second nested PCR was then carried relationships [18,19], we analysed patterns of infection and out with 1.5 mL of the first PCR product using the nested primers phylogenetic links between Haemoproteus and Plasmodium parasites HaemF (59- AATGGTGCTTTCGATATATGCATG-39) and and their avian hosts, across 26 wetland-associated passerine bird HaemR2 (59-GCATTATCTGGATGTGATAATGGT-39), as communities in